11 December 2012

The UK’s 2011 census results are in, and they contain good
news for humanists, atheists, agnostics and other non-religious people. You may
remember the high-profile campaign ran by the British Humanist Association last
year encouraging non-religious citizens to tick the ‘No religion’ box on the
census. The campaign may have had an effect after all, as the results below indicate:

The number of non-religious people has increased from 15
percent in 2001 to 25 percent in 2011.

The number of Christians has dropped from 72 percent in 2001
to 59 percent in 2011.

The number of Jedi Knights has more than halved, dropping
from approximately 390,000 in 2001 to 176,632 in 2011.

That’s a dramatic decrease in the number of self-identified
Christians with a corresponding large jump in the irreligious population. The
BHA’s campaign urging so-called Jedi to stop being silly and just put themselves
down as ‘no religion’ may have played a part in the massive drop in Jedi
numbers. BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson responded to the census data with
the following comments:

This is a really significant cultural
shift. In spite of a biased question that positively encourages religious
responses, to see such an increase in the non-religious and such a decrease in
those reporting themselves as Christian is astounding. Of course these figures
still exaggerate the number of Christians overall – the number of believing,
practicing Christians is much lower than this and the number of those leading
their lives with no reference to religion much higher.

Religious practice, identity, belonging and belief are all
in decline in this country, and non-religious identities are on the rise. It is
time that public policy caught up with this mass turning away from religious
identities and stopped privileging religious bodies with ever increasing
numbers of state-funded religious schools and other faith-based initiatives.
They are decreasingly relevant to British life and identity and governments
should catch up and accept that fact.

The UK is not yet as secular as countries like Japan, Sweden
and Denmark, but amazingly it has become less religious,
even less Christian, than Australia: 22 percent of Aussies have no religion (compared
with 25 percent of Brits) while 61 percent of Aussies are Christian (compared
with 59 percent of Brits). Still, both countries are much less religious than
the US, which remains an anomaly among rich, developed countries with 73 percent
of Americans identifying as Christians (though the number of non-religious Americans is rising).

The steady increase in the non-religious demographic in not
only the UK, but Australia and the US also, is an encouraging sign that secular
ideas and values are being embraced by more and more people in these countries.
Religion will still be around for a while, and may even pull off a modest comeback,
but social trends in the developed world are evidently not in its favour. Let’s
celebrate that.

I suspect that O’Reilly isn’t the only one who misunderstands what the term ‘philosophy’ actually means. It’s likely that a lot of folks cannot explain the difference between a philosophy and a religion (Christianity is most assuredly the latter, a fact that O’Reilly later concedes). Roberto Ruiz, who blogs at Philosophy Monkey, wrote the following post defining what philosophy is, and what it isn’t.

Unfortunately, the word philosophy is used, misused and abused by all kinds of people. For some, like the local drunk at your nearest bar, for instance, it means the semi-coherent and misogynistic ramblings about the “deep truths” he has “discovered” through dozens of failed relationships, and that he can’t help but share with you. For others, it means some sort of “deep” motto, like “believe in yourself.” A slightly more respectable version still is that of a worldview: a set of ideas by which you lead your life, and which, with any luck, are not incompatible with each other.

But for philosophers, philosophy is not a thing... it’s an activity: it is the pursuit of wisdom (the good and the true) by means of rational conceptual analysis, by rigorous and systematic observation, by synthesizing the very best knowledge that we acquire from the sciences, by subjecting claims to rational scrutiny, by questioning what others take for granted, and by developing the existential courage to confront the harshness of reality head-on without having to delude ourselves with comforting beliefs and illusions. Philosophy is something we do, not something we “have”.

Whatever its merits, however, religion is not that. In philosophy, we investigate to find answers, and we go where the evidence takes us. In religion, you start with your preconceived belief first, and then look for ways to back it up later. Philosophy is inquiry; religion is rationalization.

Religion may contain philosophy, but philosophy doesn’t require religion. In fact, religion is often the antithesis of philosophy, with its tendency to favour dogma and orthodoxy over freedom of thought and robust skepticism.

30 November 2012

When US senator Marco Rubio failed to acknowledge that the
Earth was billions of years old during an interview for GQ
magazine, scientifically literate folks pounced. Astronomer and science writer Phil
Plait took particular umbrage at Senator Rubio’s dismissive statement that the
age of the Earth “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic
growth of the United States.” In a Slate article, Plait
retorts (emphasis his):

Perhaps Senator Rubio is unaware that
science—and its sisters engineering and technology—are actually the very
foundation of our country’s economy? All of our
industry, all of our technology, everything that keeps our country functioning at all can be traced back to scientific
research and a scientific understanding of the Universe.

Cell phones, computers, cars, machinery, medicine, the
Internet, manufacturing, communication, agriculture, transportation, on and on
… all of these industries rely on science to work. Without basic research none
of these would exist.

And all of science points to the age of the Earth being
much, much older than Senator Rubio intimates. Astronomy, biology, relativity,
chemistry, physics, anatomy, sociology, linguistics, cosmology, anthropology,
evolutionary science, and especially radiometric dating of rocks all indicate
the Universe, and our home planet Earth, are far older than any claims of a few
thousand years. The overwhelming consensus is that the Earth is billions of
years old. And all of these sciences are the basis of the technology that is
our country’s life blood.

Writing for the New York Times, economist
Paul Krugman also criticised Senator Rubio’s view that geological knowledge is
unconnected to economic strength:

Coming back to the age of the earth: Does
it matter? No, says Mr. Rubio, pronouncing it “a dispute amongst
theologians”—what about the geologists?—that “has nothing to do with the
gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.” But he
couldn’t be more wrong.

We are, after all, living in an era
when science plays a crucial economic role. How are we going to search
effectively for natural resources if schools trying to teach modern geology
must give equal time to claims that the world is only 6000 years old? How are
we going to stay competitive in biotechnology if biology classes avoid any
material that might offend creationists?

So far, I’m with Plait and Krugman. After all, isn’t it
obvious that scientific literacy is essential for a technology-based economy to
flourish? Not necessarily so, according to Slate writer
Daniel Engber. Responding to Phil Plait’s article, Engber challenges the view
that a country’s economy depends on an absolute knowledge of science. He
writes:

What about Rubio’s assertion that the age
of the Earth “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic
growth of the United States”? That’s the claim that gave Phil Plait “a chill,”
since science is “the very foundation of our country's economy.” At Forbes,
Alex Knapp declares that “this economy, at its root, is built on a web of
scientific knowledge from physics to chemistry to biology. It’s impossible to
just cherry pick out parts we don’t like.” If we get it wrong on Earth’s
creation, these critics say, the United States will fall apart.

Will it really? It seems to me that Rubio is right. Lots of
basic scientific questions have no bearing whatsoever on the nation's
short-term economic growth. We can even go much further: Lots of scientific
questions don’t matter all that much when it comes to other scientific questions. It’s possible—and quite common—for scientists to plug
away at research projects without explicit knowledge of what’s happening in
other fields. And when a bedrock principle of science does need to be adjusted—a
not-so-unusual occurrence, it turns out—the edifice of scholarship doesn’t
crumble into dust. DVD players still operate. Nuclear plants don't shut down.

Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci agrees with Engber. On his
blog Rationally Speaking, Pigliucci explains why people like
Phil Plait and Paul Krugman (and Pigliucci himself, initially) are wrong to believe
that the kind of ignorance of (or disrespect for) science displayed by Senator
Rubio is ipso facto damaging to science, or the economy, as a
whole:

There is a deeper philosophical reason
why Engber is right and people like Phil and myself ought to be more cautious
with our outrage at the cutting of scientific budgets or at politicians’
opportunistic uttering of scientific nonsense to gather supporters and votes.
Knowledge in general, and scientific knowledge in particular, is not like an
edifice with foundations — a common but misleading metaphor. If it were, it
would be more likely that, as Phil so strongly stated, everything is connected to everything else, so that ignoring, denying, or replacing one
piece of the building will likely create fractures all over the place.

But that’s not how it works. Rather, to
use philosopher W.V.O. Quine’s apt metaphor, knowledge is more like a web, with
some threads being stronger or more interconnected than others. […] If you see
science as a web of statements, observations, experiments, and theories, then
it becomes perfectly clear why Engber is right at pointing out that quite a bit
of independence exists between different parts of the web, and how even
relatively major chunks of said web can be demolished and replaced without the
whole thing crumbling. There really is next to no connection between someone’s
opinions about the age of the earth and that person’s grasp of the state and
causes of a country’s economy.

Pigliucci’s use of the ‘science is a web’ metaphor is
persuasive. But before you think that he is letting anti-scientific folks like
Senator Rubio, creationists and ‘alternative’ medicine advocates off the hook,
Pigliucci clarifies his position on the value of science and evidence-based
reasoning (emphasis his):

Still, there is an important point where
Phil is absolutely correct and that I think Engber underestimates. What is “chilling”
and disturbing about people like Rubio (but not people like Obama) is that they
have embraced a general
philosophy of rejecting evidence and reason whenever it is
ideologically or politically convenient. That is what is highly dangerous.

I can see Pigliucci’s point about how science isn’t a
monolithic edifice that will collapse when its foundations are cracked by
ignorance and rejection of facts. I accept his argument that science is
actually a web, where torn or missing threads in one part may not affect the
structural integrity of the whole, or other parts of the web. Still, as Pigliucci concedes, this does not
excuse anti-scientific attitudes. A country’s economic prosperity may not be entirely
dependent on the scientific literacy of its leaders, but a culture that enables,
even encourages, ignorance and rejection of knowledge surely isn’t a healthy one.

28 November 2012

Here’s a fine example of scientific literacy, or at least a
proper respect for medical science, in our legal system. An Australian judge refused to accept a mother’s belief in homeopathy and ordered that her 8-year-old
daughter be vaccinated with real vaccines.

From the news report:

A doctor in homeopathic medicine told the court that homeopathic
vaccination was safe and effective, whereas traditional vaccination had short-
and long-term risks, including a link to ADHD and autism.

But Justice
Bennett accepted the evidence of a doctor at the Royal Children's Hospital in
Melbourne, who said there was insufficient evidence of the effectiveness of
homeopathic immunisation to justify its replacement of traditional
immunisation.

The links to
ADHD and autism had been disproved by studies in Scandinavia, France and the
United States, the doctor said.

Justice
Bennett said the risks associated with traditional immunisation did not
outweigh the risks of infection.

“It appears
to me that the efficacy of homeopathic vaccines in preventing infectious
diseases has not been adequately scientifically demonstrated,” she said.

Science = 1.
Woo = 0.

I do have
one quibble though: the reference to “traditional” immunisation makes it
seem like vaccination is merely a ‘tradition’ passed down uncritically, rather
than the scientifically proven practice that it is.

Even though a poorly-designed government scheme makes
taxpayers subsidise anti-vaxers, the judge’s decision gives me hope that
Australians are generally unsympathetic to anti-vaccination ideology. The poll
included in the article and the comments below it are also encouraging. Great
to see so many people showing strong critical thinking skills and an
understanding of epidemiology and immunology. Homeopathy also gets the drubbing
it deserves.

It’s sad that the legal system has to intervene in order to
protect children from their own parents. But when those parents swallow dangerous
ideas hook, line and sinker, this intervention becomes necessary.

I’m too young to be part of the generation that watched the
TV series Cosmos when it first aired, but the legacy of its
presenter Carl Sagan is so potent that you can’t avoid reading quotes
attributed to him on various science blogs, websites, forums, Facebook pages
and Twitter feeds. The American astronomer, astrophysicist, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and science populariser died in 1996, but he would have turned 78 years old earlier this month, on the 9th, if he hadn’t succumbed to pneumonia caused by a rare blood disorder.

Jerry Coyne wrote a post commemorating the great scientist
who played a huge role in educating and inspiring people through his many books
(30 in all) and popular 1980 television show Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.
Coyne’s post includes three videos of Carl Sagan’s last interview with Charlie
Rose, conducted just seven months before Sagan’s death. In the interview Sagan addressed
the pernicious effects of pseudoscience, superstition, mysticism and religious extremism while
giving a passionate defense of science, arguing for the importance of
scientific literacy among the general public. Below are a few quotes from the
first part of the interview that capture the gist of Sagan’s views.

Science is more than a body of knowledge.
It’s a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine
understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions,
to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of
those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or
religious, who comes ambling along.

The thing about science is, first of all,
it’s after the way the universe really is, and not what makes us feel good, and
a lot of the competing doctrines are after what feels good, and not what’s
true.

And here is Sagan’s response to the common charge from
religionists that scientists are arrogant and overconfident about their
knowledge and abilities.

Who is more humble, the scientist who
looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has
to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this [holy] book must be
considered the literal truth and nevermind the fallibility of all the human
beings involved in the writing of this book?

The first video of the 3-part interview (part 2 here, and
part 3 here):

Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan gave a very moving description of
her relationship with her late husband, and how he faced his impending death
with “unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions.”

Carl Sagan was a torchbearer for science, for its beauty, wonder and power of discovery. He made our “pale blue dot” world a more enlightened place.

21 November 2012

Over at Daylight Atheism, Adam Lee has listed 11 questions for those who oppose abortion. Lee had previously responded to Christian writer Trevin Wax’s 10 questions for pro-choicers, so it was only fair that anti-abortionists* like Wax were asked some tough questions too.

I think Lee gave thoughtful, well articulated answers to Wax’s questions. His answers correct a few misconceptions about the pro-choice position, while exposing some of the underlying presumptions of anti-abortionists (newsflash: pro-choicers don’t think sex-selective abortion is ok). Lee’s questions in turn should make any reasonable anti-abortionist think deeply about their views in attempting to defend them. Many of these questions are intended to draw attention to the inherent contradictions, ignorance, absurdity and hypocrisy in anti-abortion arguments. Let’s see what rhetorical contortions the anti-abortionists will perform to square the circles of their religiously influenced views.

* I refuse to call anti-abortionists ‘pro-lifers’ or to even use the term ‘pro-life’ in reference to anti-abortion views. It’s an insult to both common sense and the English language to call such views ‘pro-life’ when they hold lumps of unconscious cells in higher regard than the lives of conscious, feeling, female human beings with hopes, fears and aspirations.

15 November 2012

I would rather not write a third consecutive post on the pernicious Catholic Church, but I write this to show solidarity with those who mourn the death of Savita Halappanavar. I don’t have much more to say that hasn’t already been said with righteous anger by PZ Myers. I can’t add anything substantial to what has been expressed by Grania Spingies. And I certainly can’t improve on Dr. Jen Gunter’s professional assessment of this tragedy.

But I will say this: if you think that the Catholic Church is innocent of Savita’s death, that the manslaughter of a young woman is a crime to be pinned on the Irish government alone, or the hospital, you are a shameful apologist for the Church. If you even dare to glibly mention how the Church doesn’t forbid abortion when the mother’s life is in danger, as if this oh-so-generous accommodation reflects the Church’s magnanimity, you only show how warped your moral reasoning is.

Let me spell it out for you: Savita’s death, and the deaths and suffering of other women like her under similar circumstances (having an abortion denied on religious grounds), would not have happened if the idea that fetuses had souls and that aborting them was a mortal sin DID. NOT. EXIST. We can thank the Holy See for such baseless, superstitious ideas, ideas that reach out far from Rome to blight the lives of people living in distant places. Like Savita, they don’t even have to be Catholic to be victims of the Church.

I will concede that the phrase “religion poisons everything” is an exaggeration. But only marginally so.

14 November 2012

In the wake of PM Julia Gillard’s announcement of a royal
commission to investigate allegations of institutional child sex abuse, Cardinal
George Pell bleated about how the Church was the victim of a smear campaign
by the media. He also went on to defend the Seal of Confession, a Catholic sacrament
whereby priests are forbidden to divulge the confessions of penitents, calling
it “inviolable”. Here is Pell’s suggestion for how priests can avoid being
caught between a rock and a hard place:

If
the priest knows beforehand about such a situation [of sexual abuse], the
priest should refuse to hear the confession. […] That would be my advice, and I
would never hear the confession of a priest who is suspected of such a thing.

What an odious, and utterly impotent, piece of advice. Pell
is basically telling his underlings that they’re better off turning a deaf ear
to possible cases of sexual abuse rather than ‘violating’ a Catholic injunction
against snitching. How does refusing to hear the confession of a child
abuser help to bring him to justice? To protect innocent children?

Cardinal George Pell

Independent senator Nick Xenophon has called the Seal of Confession
“a medieval law that needs to change in the 21st century”, and stated that “Church
law, canon law, should not be above the law of the land.” Others agree, as the
ABC reports:

New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell,
who is a Catholic, says he cannot fathom why priests should not be required to
pass on evidence of child abuse to police.

“I think the law of the land when it comes to particularly
mandatory reporting around issues to do with children should apply to everyone
equally,” Mr O’Farrell told AM.

“How can you possibly, by the continuation of this practice,
potentially continue to give... a free pass to people who've engaged in the
most heinous of acts?”

Federal Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne, who is also a
Catholic, believes criminal law should take priority over church rules when it
comes to child abuse.

“If a priest hears in a confessional a crime, especially a
crime against a minor, the priest has the responsibility in my view to report
that to the appropriate authorities,” Mr Pyne told ABC News.

“In this case the police, because the church nor the priests
should be above the law.”

If Australia is to remain true to its secular principles,
the laws of any religious body must not take precedence over
civil laws. The Catholic Church in particular is notorious for its primary
allegiance to the dictates of the Holy See in Rome, and will often give those
dictates priority over the laws of the country in which the Church operates.
Whether it concerns abortion, contraception or gay marriage, the Church holds its
laws to be above those enacted by civil, secular society. Such insolence must
not go unchallenged.

Of course, the elephant in the room is that the very idea of
the Seal of Confession depends on the belief in ‘sin’, a ludicrous concept that
underpins almost every Christian doctrine. Without it, there would be no need
for a formal rite of ‘confession’, no need for priests to wrestle with both the
demands of morality and the demands of the Church, no need for Pellian
loopholes where terrible crimes are ignored to avoid ‘sinning’ by breaking the
Seal of Confession. It is the idea of ‘sin’ itself, among other religious dogma,
that is the cause of much harm inflicted by the Church.